


follow you to every town

by charleybradburies



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Character Development, Clint Barton Made a Different Call, Comics/Movie Crossover, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Sex, Extended Metaphors, F/M, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Living Together, Metaphors, Mild Sexual Content, Missions, Mistletoe, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD, Natasha-centric, New York City, Nightmares, POV Natasha Romanov, Romance, Running, Running Away, SHIELD, Sex, Spies & Secret Agents, Time Skips, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Undercover, Undercover Missions, Undercover as Married, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha runs. Agent Barton doesn't run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	follow you to every town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).



> I'm not entirely sure how I got this fic from this, but inspired by this prompt from the be_compromised 2015 promptathon (and written for the Halloween ATTF Trick or Treat):
> 
> "The weight of lies will bring you down  
> and follow you to every town,  
> cos nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there.
> 
> So when you run make sure you run  
> to something and not away from,  
> cos lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere." 
> 
> [The Weight of Lies, The Avett Brothers]

Natasha Romanov runs. It’s indisputable. It’s just a fact.

She likes the exercise of physical running, the focus, the distance, the quiet, the right to move past people with only seldom interaction being expected. 

She likes the freedom of metaphysical running, of never being tied down, never staying anywhere for a long time, connections and allies and enemies but never people who expected anything of her that wouldn’t get put in a file labeled ‘top secret’.

Agent Barton doesn’t run. He doesn’t particularly like that she runs, either, probably because he’s the one who’s expected to make sure she doesn’t do anything reckless.

She’s pretty sure she hasn’t ever done anything reckless. She calculates every move, every word, everything. 

Agent Barton tells her she’s _too_ calculated since she’s not in the field. He says he doesn’t use calculators at home unless he has to buy new underwear, and she’s not sure why he finds that relevant. 

He’s kinder and gentler than she expects, especially to her. The kinder he is, the higher her guard. She starts wondering what his ulterior motive is, assuming that he’s been commanded to earn her trust. 

She runs every morning, early enough that he’s only just waking up by the time she’s out of the shower. It takes him a few weeks to figure out that the water is still hot when he gets in because she’s never taken hot showers and sees no reason to start now. He looks at her like she’s said something ridiculous.

She eavesdrops on his phone calls, partly out of habit and partly out of interest. He tells Fury that he thinks Natasha’s adjusting well. She wonders where he’s gotten that idea, because she still feels utterly out of place in Bedstuy.

She starts to worry that she’ll never feel at home anywhere. He says that home isn’t just a place but the people that one’s with.

He says she can think of him as home as soon as she’s comfortable doing so, and doesn’t make her respond. He picks up the phone and orders Chinese food, and they share it in front of the tiny television with some cheesy program playing, mostly in the background. 

They fall asleep on the couch hours later, and she wakes up alone in his bed, tucked in and fully clothed. He’s back on the couch - without even pulling out the creaky bed part - and apparently when he’s sleeping uncomfortably he snores.

Fury doesn’t let her go out in the field for weeks, since he wants to make her work for it; no one at SHIELD can even fathom how hard she’s had to work just to stay alive, which makes him far more frustrating, at least until she earns his respect. Then, even he seems fairly easy to get on with, or at least as easy as someone in his executive position can be. Natasha finds herself giving him the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

Barton wants her to be honest. She thinks she knows better. He says that continuing a chain of lies will only burden her, but it isn’t like she knows much else. After all, her entire life is just a chain of lies. Somehow he’s insistent that he doesn’t think that’s possible, let alone true, and she shrugs it off until the nightmares start back up again.

She’s always had nightmares, at varying intervals, about various things. Usually related to the Red Room, but not always. She can almost always remember them for at least a few hours. At some point she wrote them down because someone said that it would help, but it didn’t. 

She’s never had anyone who comforted her, but one night she finds that she can’t help but scream, and even though she never falls asleep again that night, he stays sitting up on the couch-bed holding her in his arms, letting her cry. He falls asleep, but he doesn’t let go. She thinks this might be what safety feels like, and then she cries about that, too. 

The first time Fury puts them in the field together, she calls him Clint for the first time, too. He’s more surprised than she is.

The second time, she’s properly exhausted by the end of the mission, and then, when they’re finally done, she lightheartedly says that they should go home. He smiles, and makes a joke about not wanting to carry her. 

Naturally, she insists he does for a few minutes, just to grind his gears. He pretends to drop her a couple of times, and she threatens to shoot him if he actually does. A smoker hanging out on the corner of a block near their building tells them they sound married. 

The third time, they’re undercover as a married couple at a rich people’s Christmas party, and he catches her off guard by kissing her. Some other guests laugh at her surprise, and some cheer, having realized, unlike Natasha, that they’d wandered underneath mistletoe at some point during a conversation. He wraps his arms around her shoulders in the limo they take back to their covers’ hotel, and she doesn’t consider moving it until they’re getting out and she consciously realizes it had been around her that whole time. 

After some joke that neither of them ever quite remembers, she later kisses him back in the hotel room. 

They never really seem to stop after that. Well, not when they’re alone, that is, not for extended periods of time. Clint never expects anything more, and Natasha doesn’t know what to make of that. 

Clint Barton is a cuddler. She knows this from the first morning that she wakes up in his bed while he’s in it, because she has to actually wake him up for a moment in order to get out of bed for her run. 

Natasha becomes a cuddler. She’d never really known it, but she comes back from her run and takes her shower, and then sees that he’s still in bed, and she makes the decision to get back in bed for a few more hours. He wakes up around noon, very confused that she’s still there entangled in his arms, especially since she smells like shampoo. 

When she laughs at his expression, he smiles, laughs back, and softly kisses her. 

In that moment, or perhaps soon after, something changes.

Maybe he holds her differently, or touches her differently, or maybe it’s her, or maybe it’s nothing nearly as tangible. Maybe, she wonders, he’s not afraid she’s going to leave, but it’s not like they were together in the first place, so he didn’t really have anything to be afraid, did he?

 _She’s_ afraid, though. 

She doesn’t want to be, and she tries hard not to be, but she’s spent her entire adult life sleeping either with a weapon under her pillow, or a target - occasionally a partner - on the pillow next to hers. Never someone that stayed around, or even that kept her around, never someone that had reason to. 

Never someone that had reason to see her as a person. An agent, a target, a threat, a hero, a villain, a good fuck, sure, but never as a person. Never just herself, with or without baggage. She’s never had a place to put down her baggage to begin to with, let alone someone who was offering to carry it. 

But Clint - Clint still wants her sleeping in his bed even though they both wake up every single time she has a nightmare. He gets less sleep than she does those nights, and never really complains about it. He just asks for more coffee, or if it’s after noon, something stronger, but he never blames her. Not even when she blames herself. 

She’s been living with him for more than a year and a half when they actually have sex the first time. She can’t help thinking it’s more of a first time than what she usually considers as her first time, since the only reason she’s done it is when a mission called for it. She’s attractive, and she almost always has impeccable control of her body, and she’s used it for information and leverage. But wanting someone has never been a part of that, not for her.

But Clint makes her laugh just for the sake of making her laugh, and even that alone helps her separate the experience from her past. He’s slow and steady about everything up until their last few moments; Natasha doesn’t like the chance to ruminate, but soon enough she’s barely able to construct thoughts at all and that doesn’t much matter. 

He joins her on her run the following morning. He’s exhausted again by the time they’re back in the apartment, so she practically has to drag him into the shower in order to get him clean. He has had two workouts since his last shower, after all. Clint, in turn, pulls her back into bed afterwards. In all honesty, she doesn’t really mind. 

For the first time, it feels like she has purpose. Not just the vague thought of justice or the orders from her superiors, but an actual, tangible, reason, for fighting the war she’s long since started fighting. For being on the side that wanted people alive, and a new start without burning the whole world to ashes. 

For the first time, Natasha realizes, she’s not running away from anything.

Now, she’s running towards something. Towards _him._ Towards _them_ : them as a team, them as friends, best friends, as lovers, as partners. Towards a version of herself she’s never known before, a better one, one who’s just, and kind, and rational, one who feels things. Someone who can pick herself up again when she stumbles, not because she’s afraid of retribution or chastisement, but because she has the strength and the desire to keep going.

And maybe, she’ll admit, it’s nice to have someone who’ll stretch a hand down to help you stand back up, even (or perhaps especially) if it means choosing not to follow orders.


End file.
